by Chloe Neill
“I feel much relief.”
“I bet.”
* * *
• • •
The wall around Devil’s Isle, dozens of feet of concrete and steel topped by the generator-powered electrical grid that kept incarcerated Paras from simply flying away, seemed to materialize from the mist. It was tall and imposing and, at the moment, comfortingly solid.
Hands on the wall, we made our way toward the guardhouse—and saw the gate standing wide-open. We walked inside, sounds cutting through the silence. Alarms, shouts, footsteps. But they bounced and echoed through the fog, and it was impossible to tell where they originated.
“The source is definitely in here,” I said. The fog had gotten thicker, the scent stronger, as we walked north, father into the neighborhood.
“If you wanted a diversion,” I said, “you couldn’t do better than this.”
“The gate was open,” Liam said. “That may not be a coincidence. We have to get rid of it. But I don’t know how we can make magic just disappear.”
I waved my fingers through the mist. I couldn’t feel anything, but I could see the shadows, the shifting dark and light.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But I bet we can move it.”
“Move it,” he said quietly. “Could we do that? This much?”
A gunshot pinged somewhere to our left, probably fired by an agent who couldn’t see two feet in front of him. Liam’s fingers tightened around mine.
“So, we try to move it toward the river?”
I smiled. “I’m glad you’ve warmed up to the idea. I’ll grab it, direct it. You follow my lead.”
“Every time,” Liam said.
We turned back toward the south, and I took a deep breath, centered myself. Then I closed my eyes, opened my mind to the glimmering filaments of magic that permeated the air, the fog, and, because I hadn’t cast off the magic, my body. Normally I’d braid them together into a kind of magical cord I could use to lasso the object I wanted to move. But this fog was a different animal. It didn’t have boundaries, or at least not that we could see, and that was going to be a challenge.
I lifted my free hand as I stared toward the river on the other side of the levee, which was on the other side of the southern Devil’s Isle wall. Like the Veil, the Mississippi was an artery through New Orleans. I didn’t need to see it in order to steer something toward it.
I imagined the combined space of our bodies was a net, a broom, that could push the fog forward.
“Now,” I quietly said, and his fingers tightened as we began to walk forward, and to exert our own magic.
The mist reacted immediately, tingling up and down my arms as we shoved it toward the river. But shafts of light began to spear down through the gray where the fog had begun to thin. This was working.
“Keep going,” I said, the tingling getting stronger—now pins and needles against my skin—as we shuffled along, one slow step at a time, and swept the magic out of the way.
“Stop,” Liam said, and I did.
She stood twenty feet away, tendrils of fog swirling around her feet. Short and curvy, with pale skin and cropped white hair. And the telltale streak of crimson down the center of her forehead, nose, and lips, and the tips of her fingers.
Seelie.
She wore a sleeveless white tunic beneath a golden chest plate, and leather sandals that laced nearly to the knee. Her hair was short and blond; her eyes were piercingly blue. She was staring straight ahead, face tight with concentration. Her hands were at her sides, palms up, her lips moving slightly as she tried to keep control of her magic.
She was the source of the fog. If one Seelie was involved, could the others Liam had seen be close behind?
“Liam.”
“Yeah.”
And she saw us, and loathing flared in her eyes. Not just distaste or an absence of approval, but full-blown animosity. She hated us. And I’d never seen her before.
“Not fog,” he said. “It’s Seelie magic. They’re air spirits.”
“That explains the flying,” I said, and made myself look at her, look past the loathing. “They can control, what, weather?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They usually just go for the hand-to-hand.”
“Present company excluded,” I said, and braced as the woman drew her hands and fingers together, index fingers pointed as if aiming the barrel of a red-tipped gun at us. Magic began to flow from her hands like waves of heat above pavement, rippling through the air as it moved toward us. The pins and needles became stabbing pain as she channeled her hatred into magic.
“I could use her,” Liam said, and my gaze snapped to his, even as I worked to concentrate against pain that tried to shatter my thoughts and my focus.
It was the first time I’d seen his face since the fog had descended. It was still gorgeous. But hatred blazed gold in his eyes now, hot as a new star. It put a chill through me.
“That emotion isn’t yours,” I told him. “It’s hers. You’re feeling her emotions through her magic. You have to ignore it, Liam. You have to ignore her and focus.”
“She hates us. Would kill us if she could. But that is not the plan. That is not the need.”
Okay, maybe we could use this. If I could keep him from killing someone. “What plan, Liam? What do they need?”
“To prepare. To be ready.”
“For whom? For what?”
“For their plans. For their . . . reunion?” His face was clenched, forehead beading with effort. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m losing it, Claire. She’s gaining ground.”
“Then we’ll stop her,” I said, and looked at her again, gathered up every glimmer of magic I could find. “Push it back,” I murmured, a demand to myself, the words gritted as I spooled in more magic and shoved it against the volley she returned.
She was strong, and her magic was inherent. Ours was foreign and accidental. But together—my magic and Liam’s twined and twisted—we were stronger. It was like combustion, his magic a catalyst for mine, and it glimmered through the air, dissolving the fog even as it leached the magic from my body.
The fog was now a carpet at our feet, wisps covering the ground and curling at our ankles—and no longer obscuring our vision.
Containment guards, who’d been waiting to finally see the battlefield, ran toward the Seelie. They grabbed her, breaking her magical focus, her concentration. She reached out, struck one, and he wrapped a hand around her arm, twisted. She flailed as they took her, kicking and screaming in an unintelligible language, puncturing skin with nails and teeth.
She managed to wrench away, to run, and made it ten feet before a soldier pulled out a stunner and sent a stream in her direction.
I jerked as her body did. She collapsed to the ground with a thud, and the magic melted away, fog evaporating in the rising sun.
I hit the ground on my knees, breath heaving in and out as the magic rushed back in, filling the vacuum it had left behind. My chest was tight, as if my lungs had been pushed aside by the magic. I had to get rid of it. I’d already cut it too close.
But there was no time.
Air raid sirens began to wail.
CHAPTER FOUR
I saw a flash and looked up, found nothing but enormous white clouds in a tropical blue sky. And then, as if someone had tossed jewels into the sky, a diamond-like glint, then another. And then there were two dozen gleaming diamonds.
No, not gemstones, I realized when my brain had caught up, understood what it was seeing. Gleaming golden spears and bows held by two dozen Seelies. They were all female, or appeared to be, with golden chest plates and shin guards over white tunics. Some were pale, some dark, but all had the same streak of crimson across their faces, across the fingers curled around their spears.
The fog had absolutely been a diversion.
I squeeze
d my eyes shut, prayed for the strength to push the magic down into a hot little ball in the center of my belly, where it could wait until I had time to deal with it.
When I opened them again, Paras, drawn by the fog’s dissipation, stood in front of their cottages, wondering at the alarm and the commotion in the streets. They hadn’t yet seen the weapons.
“Liam!” I said, and pointed to the houses. “Get them inside!”
“Claire,” he said, expression drawn with concern, but I shook my head, waved him off. My legs were too wobbly.
“Don’t wait for me. Just go.”
I could see the frustration in his eyes, but he nodded back, ran toward the cottages, calling out warnings. “Get inside! Close your doors and get inside.” There was screaming and frantic movement as parents scooped up children, slammed doors, let curtains obscure windows.
It took another five seconds for me to stand, ten to reach the nearest building and flatten myself against the wall beneath an overhanging balcony. Liam stood across the street in nearly the same position as we waited for the barrage.
But nothing hit the ground. We weren’t the target. Or weren’t yet.
Sparks filled the air as the Seelie weapons slammed into the high transformers that fueled the overhead security grid. Booms rattled the neighborhood as one transformer after another burst into flames.
The green glow of the security grid—visible even in daylight—flickered, then faded. Devil’s Isle was open to the sky.
For a moment, there was only silence, and then the background buzz of the grid replaced by the chirp of birds and the silence of stunned humans and Paras. And then the air came alive.
Wind barreled through the street with the force of a marauding army, throwing dust and dirt into the air, and was nearly strong enough to shove us backward. And it smelled sickeningly of cloves. The scent of Seelie magic.
I turned toward the wall, leaned against it, fingernails digging in, to stay upright, and squinted to keep the grit out of my eyes. The wind slapped hard as a hand, and left an angry buzz of magic in its wake. Branches cracked and snapped, and shingles flew like Frisbees, and a plastic chair somersaulted down the middle of the street like a gymnast.
And the Seelies hadn’t even gotten started.
The wind shifted, and spears began to fall like hail, whistling through the air and puncturing asphalt, concrete, grass, shingles, without discrimination. They were beautiful in their way, slender and glinting in the sunlight, still vibrating with energy and magic.
There was a guttural scream as a Containment agent shoved a Para child out of the street and was struck by a spear. My heart nearly stopped when Gunnar ran forward, scooped up the child, deposited him into his mother’s waiting arms, then ran back into the street and began to drag the agent to safety, the spear rising defiantly from his abdomen as Gunnar hustled him beneath the awning of a town house.
In a matter of seconds, the street was empty.
I had only a moment to wonder what they wanted, what they’d planned, when a woman emerged from a passageway between two houses, a slim figure in dingy white cotton.
She was a Seelie, pale but for the crimson streak that lined her face and stained her long and slender fingers. Her neck was long, her cheekbones high, her eyes and mouth were open wide, and she had a slight underbite that made her look even more fey. Her hair was platinum blond and twined into a complicated braid.
I’d seen her before, standing behind a fence in Devil’s Isle. There’d been hatred in her eyes then, cold and seething, and it didn’t look like her attitude had improved.
She was completely untouched by the wind as she moved through the street, not even her pale hair shifting in the current.
Containment agents shouted out instructions and converged on her position, heads down and hands fisted as they tried to barrel through the wall of air. But the Seelies just increased the wind’s force and pushed them back.
Now in a ring-shaped formation, they reached out their hands to her, faces shining with—not joy exactly, but fulfillment. Satisfaction.
She smiled at them before turning her gaze on the humans and Paras who watched, braced against the wind and squinting to see.
“Judgment,” she said, the word traveling on the wind, powerful as a crack of thunder. And then she raised her hand toward her sisters-in-arms, and rose into the air.
She joined their circle, and something snapped into place, the sound ricocheting through the air.
A blink, and they were gone. And the wind simply dropped away.
* * *
• • •
Containment agents ran forward, weapons pointed up. But the Paras were already gone, leaving behind the wounded, the dust and debris of the storm they’d created, and the flames that dripped ominously from transformers.
Liam ran across the street, cupped my face in his hands, looked me over. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Magically spent, but fine. You okay?”
“Just scratches,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me.
I closed my eyes, let myself lean into him. Let myself feel safe. “This is why they were camped near the lake. Because they were coming to get her.”
“Yeah,” Liam said. “Containment will send troops to the camp. But if any remained behind, they won’t be there now. They’ll be looking for a new location.”
We both looked up warily at the sudden concussion of moving air.
Malachi, ivory wings open and gleaming in the sun, lowered toward the street. He’d been a commander in the Consularis army, brought into our world under magical duress. Now he worked to protect the rest of the Consularis, and occasionally us, from Containment, war, and the Court.
When he touched down, his wings closed and disappeared. Apparently seeing his presence as a beacon of safety, Paras began to emerge from their houses again, watching him carefully to figure out what they should do next.
“You saw the fight?” Liam asked when he’d reached us.
“I heard the explosion,” Malachi said. “What happened?”
“Seelies,” I said, and sketched the basics. “They came for the Seelie who lived in Devil’s Isle. Busted the power grid and literally flew away.”
The concern etched in Malachi’s face wasn’t reassuring. “Her name is Aeryth—the apparently former Devil’s Isle Seelie.”
“She wanted judgment,” I said. “Or was going to deliver it. Or maybe both. It’s what she said when she lifted up.”
Malachi considered that quietly, which didn’t make me feel any better.
“What would they have planned?” Liam asked.
Was this the finale, he meant, or just the first act?
“I don’t know,” Malachi said. “If they have a plan, it will likely be something intended to cause pain to us.”
“‘Us’ meaning humans, or Consularis?” Liam asked.
“Yes” was Malachi’s grim response.
Gunnar came toward us with the stride of a man in charge. And since he looked damage-free, I relaxed a little.
“Y’all okay?” he asked.
“We’re fine. Containment?”
“Still assessing. Right now, two agents dead, along with the Seelie who made the fog. At current count, more than a dozen wounded, mostly Paras and agents who were struck by flying objects.”
That was fewer injuries than I’d have expected from a Seelie attack.
“It wasn’t an attack,” Malachi said, clearly thinking along the same lines. “It sounds like an extraction.”
“She’s the only one missing, at least as far as we’re aware,” Gunnar said.
“And there are other Court Paras in Devil’s Isle,” Malachi said. “She would not have wanted to hurt them. Or perhaps risk Containment taking out their anger on those who remain here.”
I lifted my gaze to the
high walls, fluffy clouds moving briskly above them. “But outside the walls . . . ,” I began, and Malachi nodded.
“Outside the walls is a different matter altogether.”
“How did Aeryth get out of the cage?” Liam asked.
I stared at Gunnar. “You had her in a cage?”
“Metaphorical,” Gunnar said. “She was held in a town house, but there were cold iron stakes around the perimeter. They kept her from using magic.”
“And none of the other Paras removed them?”
“Other Paras don’t much like Seelies,” he said. “And we had a few allies who ensured the stakes stayed in place.”
“So how did she get out?” I asked, but knew the answer as soon as I’d finished. “The fog. That’s why they needed the diversion.”
“Yeah,” Gunnar said. “We’re just starting the investigation, but it looks like a human guard removed the stakes while we were dealing with this.”
“A human,” Malachi said, brows lifted.
“He’s infatuated with her,” Gunnar said flatly. “We aren’t sure how much of that is Aeryth, and how much is him. He said she asked him to remove them today, and told him when. There wasn’t any fog in that part of Devil’s Isle.”
“All the better for him to see,” Liam said, echoing the fairy tale.
“So she knew they were coming,” I said. “Knew there would be a diversion?”
“It’s early,” Gunnar said. “But it seems that way.”
“She likely learned from the other Seelies,” Malachi said. “They are able to silently share thoughts. It’s one of the reasons they’re so effective in battle.”
“We have to find her,” Gunnar said. “Them.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ll take a look at her rooms, see if there’s anything that would tell us what might be planned. But it’s unlikely she left anything incriminating behind.”
He blew out a breath, then settled his gaze on Malachi. “We’ll hold a briefing later today, and I think the Commandant would appreciate any particular expertise you can offer.”